Categorie: Science

We should be happy all the time. The happiness industry, with a turnover of millions, tells us that if we do this or don’t do that, we will become happy. We live in a world where individualism reigns and we are considered to be primarily responsible for our own happiness. Yet more and more young people are depressed or suffer from a burnout. And worldwide, suicide rates are still high with almost 17,000 persons in 2016 that took their own lives; that’s 47 people a day across the globe… Can gratitude help us?

What is gratitude?

Let me start by telling a bit about what gratitude is. Gratitude is a positive emotion that arises when we realize that we have received something that we needed. Someone saw that we lacked something and invested time, energy, or money to help us out. Only when we are genuinely aware of this help, do we experience gratitude. If we are not aware of it, we do not feel grateful and people call us ungrateful. Then why do people help others when they run the risk that their efforts are not appreciated? According to Darwin, people help others because they hope they will receive help themselves in the future if they need it.

Gratitude to God

People can give thanks to God, the universe, nature, the cosmos. In all religions and philosophies of the world, gratitude plays an important role. For my book, I interviewed two people who spoke very openly about their gratitude to God and what it has brought them. They showed me that people who believe in a God have an image of a leader, a caregiver or a protector. This God understands their shortcomings and will assist them in prosperity and adversity. People who do not believe in a God sometimes attribute these attributes to a supernatural world or spiritual beings. In both cases, people can be grateful for the support they experience from these higher powers.

Other emotions

Of course, we do not experience gratitude as the only emotion when we have received something. Gratitude goes together with other positive emotions such as joy, relief or satisfaction. But negative emotions also go together with gratitude. For example, we may feel indebted to the other person, so we want to give them something back. We prefer to give something different back in return to what we have had and use our creativity to achieve that. We will keep a close eye on whether the other person needs something, and we will return the favor as soon as the opportunity arises.

Glue

Let me summarize it: the benefactor hopes that help lies ahead, and the recipient wants to give something back to the benefactor in the future. This mutual expectation and intention create a bond between people. Gratitude is like glue in social relationships. The interesting part is that we don’t just want to give something back to the one person who did something for us. The feeling of gratitude also means that we want to mean something to other people. As someone in my book puts it so nicely: “gratitude activates”. In this way there is a connection between many people around us.

It is now clear that gratitude creates an invisible bond between people. Other people are incredibly important to us, for example when we are sick, experiencing stress, or feeling lonely. Attention and help from friends and family contributes to our happiness. We feel seen, supported, loved and appreciated. In my book, many people say that their gratitude has strengthened the bond with the loved ones who have supported them in a dark period in their life. One man had a clear message for the reader: “Dare to be grateful and keep an eye on the people around you.”

How to practice gratitude

How can we do that? Being aware of gratitude can be done with the help of a gratitude journal. Make a list of three to five things every day where you were thankful for. Look for positive experiences and the help of others that day. Do this all days but especially on the days when things didn’t go so well; bad things happen, and negative emotions are part of that. Gratitude can help to keep an overview by also looking at positive things in the whole ordeal or you can draw lessons from the unpleasant event for the future.

Sometimes people feel negative about gratitude because they always had to be thankful because of their faith. I can imagine that it is difficult to be thankful in that case. My advice to them is to not use the word “gratitude” but the word “happy”. Not: “I am grateful for my mother’s cooking skills”, but “I am happy that my mother cooks for me every day”. The burdened word disappears, but attention is still paid to people who helped and things that went well that day.

Gratitude makes us happier

Can gratitude help us to be happier? I certainly think that gratitude can contribute to our happiness. It does not do this directly, but indirectly: thanks to gratitude we feel more connected to the people around us. Don’t wait for help but feel free to ask because people really want to help others. In this way we can initiate this mutual gratitude ourselves with all people around us and that will ultimately make us happier, because we are only happy together.

(This blog post was published before on the Dutch website www.degrotevragen.nl) 

Following my blog post about what gratitude is, a follower asked what the importance of gratitude is for the giver. That is an interesting question that I want to answer in the blog post below.

Evolution

Gratitude fulfills an evolutionary need of the giver. Darwin (1889) wrote in The Descent of Man: “… for we are led by the hope of receiving good in return to perform acts of sympathetic kindness to others.” If our hope for something good from the recipient is not fulfilled, then we think of the other of being ungrateful.

Reciprocal altruism

Why people are willing to give something to another person is attributed to reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971). Reciprocal altruism means that someone is willing to give, even if there are costs associated with this giving. They would do this because they hope that these costs might pay off, now or in the future, if the giver is in a situation where they need help. This allows the beneficiary to give something back to the person who previously offered the help.

Moral emotion

Gratitude is a moral emotion. Moral emotions are feelings that have to do with behavior and situations that we as people think are right and wrong. Is the behavior of the other person right or wrong? Does someone trespass a moral norm? Do we see that another person is hurting? In these cases, we feel emotions such as gratitude, compassion, guilt and regret. We will try to do something to turn the bad into something good.

There are three moral functions of gratitude. The first two are moral functions for the beneficiary. First, gratitude functions as a moral barometer. The beneficiary realizes that he has received something from another person. The second moral function of gratitude is a motivating function. If someone has received something, there is a need to give something back to the giver (McCullough et al., 2001). This can also be someone else then the giver; gratitude activates (Jans-Beken 2019).

The third moral function is important for the giver. If gratitude is expressed, then this gratitude ensures that the giver feels acknowledged. So, expressing gratitude is important. As a result, the giver is more inclined to do something for another person in return (McCullough et al., 2001). The giver does not necessarily have to give something back to the same person but can also give something to a completely different person. This is called pay-it-forward or upstream reciprocity. In this way, gratitude spreads prosocial behavior within a group of individuals (Nowak & Roch, 2007).

Expressing gratitude

The giver certainly has his need or reason to do something for someone else, and it is therefore important to express our gratitude. As William Arthur Ward said: “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it, is like wrapping a gift and not giving it”. Expressing gratitude ensures that the ripples called gratitude continue to spread.

Literature

• Darwin, C. (1889). The Descent of Man. Boston: D. Appleton and Company 
• Jans-Beken, L. G. P. J. (2019). Een zoektocht naar dankbaarheid. Oudorp: Jans-Beken Publishing.
• McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., Kilpatrick, S. D., & Larson, D. B. (2001). Is Gratitude a Moral Affect? Psychological Bulletin, 127(2), 249-266. 
• Nowak, M. A., & Roch, S. (2007). Upstream reciprocity and the evolution of gratitude. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 274(1610), 605–610.
• Trivers, R. L. (1971). The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35–57.a

We say ’thank you’ in passing when someone keeps a door open for us. We feel intense gratitude when someone saves our lives. But what is gratitude? What has science to say about that?

Emotion

Gratitude is a social emotion with a positive valence, and it is occurring together with other positive emotions such as cheerfulness and satisfaction (Jans-Beken et al., 2018). The feeling originates if four requirements are met: awareness of the intention of the giving person, perceived cost for the giving person, value to the receiving person, and perceived responsiveness to the receiving person. Let’s explain this.

Ingredients

When someone receives a benefit from another person, it is important that the giving person is willing to present the benefit. The receiving person has to acknowledge that there is some cost involved for the giving person. The benefit also should have a certain value to the receiving person (Tesser, Gatewood, & Driver, 1968). Important in this exchange between people is that the benefit that is given, meets a need of the receiving person (Algoe, 2012). When all four requirements are met, gratitude will be felt by the receiver.

Example

Let me illustrate this with an example. Imagine a single mother with three children on welfare. This month the washing machine broke down and she had to buy another one. Now, she is out of money to feed her children. A neighbor, who is a gardener, sees what is happening and he gives her $200 to help her out. This is a lot of money for the mother and the money fulfills a great need of her and her family. The mother feels immensely grateful to the neighbor. 

What if?

But what if the neighbor was forced by his partner to give the $200? What if the neighbor was a millionaire? What if the mother was not on welfare but worked as a lawyer with a six-figure income? The mother would sense that the neighbor did not really intent to give the money.  Moreover, $200 is not a lot of money for a millionaire. And when the mother earns enough money to support her family, even when the washing machine would brake down, there was no need to fulfill. Gratitude would not the emotion felt; she even might feel offended!

Gratitude

We can conclude that in human interaction, gratitude is a positive feeling that arises when a delicate mix of ingredients is met. So, let’s keep doing things for each other, enjoy this wonderful feeling, and thrive!

Literature

• Algoe, S. B. (2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(6), 455–469. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2012.00439.x
• Jans-Beken, L., Jacobs, N., Janssens, M., Peeters, S., Reijnders, J., Lechner, L., & Lataster, J. (2019). Reciprocal relationships between State gratitude and high-and low-arousal positive affects in daily life: A time-lagged ecological assessment study. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 14(4), 512–527. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2018.1497684 
• Tesser, A., Gatewood, R., & Driver, M. (1968). Some determinants of gratitude. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(3), 233–236. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025905

Loneliness is a costly societal problem. The elderly are particularly at risk of loneliness because they are confronted with the loss of, for example, work and loved ones. People of 40 years and older who are regularly grateful appear to feel less lonely. How is that possible? Esther Frinking answers this question in a study published in Aging & Mental Health. She did this together with her team, which is a collaboration between the Open University Netherlands and IGDORE. She asked 163 people between the ages of 41 and 92 about their gratitude and psychological flexibility, and whether they felt lonely. From her results, psychological flexibility appeared to be an important mechanism between gratitude and loneliness.

Gratitude

That gratitude is associated with more positive and less negative emotions, has been regularly found in various studies (Jans-Beken, 2018). Why this is, is still unclear. Wood and colleagues (2010) suggested two underlying mechanisms. First, the ingredients of gratitude – intention, costs, benefits and responsiveness – may lead to more positive feelings. Their other suggestion was that grateful people are handling difficulties more actively and are less inclined to avoid problems.

Psychological flexibility

The latter suggestion is particularly interesting. This idea is closely related to psychological flexibility, a term used in the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). This term refers to the ability to deal with setbacks flexibly by increasing engagement in a meaningful and valuable life. Psychological flexibility has six core processes – acceptance, defusion, being present, itself as context, values and committed action. These processes overlap and are interconnected. 

Less loneliness

This research by Frinking and colleagues shows that gratitude can support psychological flexibility in the elderly. People with more life experience know that life can be good, but also accept that life has setbacks (P. T. P. Wong, 2012). Gratitude helps to pause a moment and to pay attention to both inner feelings and the environment (Emmons and Mishra, 2011). As a result, thankful people are more likely to actively look for other people for social support. Contact with other people provides meaning to life, because important values such as kindness, gratitude and care are given a place in daily life, so that less loneliness is experienced.

Source: Frinking, E., Jans-Beken, L. G. P. J., Janssens, M., Peeters, S., Lataster, J., Jacobs, N., & Reijnders, J. (2019). Gratitude and Loneliness in Adults over 40 Years: Examining the Role of Psychological Flexibility and Engaged Living. Aging & Mental Health.  

Literature 

• Emmons, R. A., & Mishra, A. (2011). Why gratitude enhances well-being: What we know, what we need to know. In Kennon M. Sheldon, Todd B. Kashdan, & M. F. Steger (Eds.), Designing positive psychology: Taking stock and moving forward (pp. 248–262). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ]
• Jans-Beken, L. G. P. J. (2018). Appreciating Gratitude: New Perspectives on the Gratitude Mental Health Connection (Open University Netherlands). 
• Wong, P. T. P. (2012). Toward a dual-systems model of what makes life worth living. In P. T. P. Wong (Ed.), The human quest for meaning (pp. 49–68). Routledge. 
• Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 890–905.